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Thursday, 15 September 2011

Alpinist/Masakari - Split LP

Alpinist/MasakariSplit LPAlerta Antifascista (EU)The split, for me, is an
often overlooked and undervalued way of getting your music out there. I’ve lost
count of the number of bands I discovered just by picking up a split release by
a band I’ve already heard of. Unfortunately, in this digital age, it seems that
they’re firmly the realm of the underground nowadays, and often they’re given
limited print runs. Still, the split is a valuable tool, and in this case, it
was an introduction to Germany’s Alpinist, whom I might not have picked up on
straight away were it not for Masakari, who came to my attention last year with
the excellent ‘The Prophet Feeds’.

Alpinist are up first on
this split and they don’t mess about in getting to the action. Their sludgy
hardcore finds full effect on opener ‘Abgerichtet’. You’ll notice the chunky
riffage straight away – it’s got a lovely, thick tone to it, pounding away for
much of the duration of the split. The tempo varies well, their drummer Henrik
putting in a shift on. If you thought this band couldn’t surprise you any more,
just wait to you hear ‘Quelle Valuer
Reste’, their final track on the split. Its long atmospheric opening isn’t what
you’d expect from a band that put in such a dynamic on those first five tracks,
but it’s mightily impressive. It’s a wondrous moment and it’s enough to rubber
stamp this split alone as quality stuff.

The Masakari side isn’t
quite as impressive for my liking, but that’s not to say it ain’t no good; far
from it – its fecking heavy and intense as you like, as anyone familiar with
their debut album will know. Their opener, ‘VIII: The Obscene Underbelly’ is a
slow burner that eventually roars into life, and from then on in, Masakari are
right in your face. If you don’t believe me, tracks like ‘X: Sleep’, at a
fleeting 72 seconds in length, will slap the slumber right out of you. It’s a
full-on powerviolence-tinged assault, reminiscent of acts like Trap Them and
scene luminaries Cursed, and it’s like being chased through a house of horrors
– by the time ‘XXIII: Hexenhammer’ and ‘XX: Modulation’ come along to close the
split, you’ll find your heart pounding and yourself wishing you’d never gone in
there. Your brain might have other ideas though, given how impressive this band
is as well.

Arguably the split release
of the year, these two bands match up well enough with one another to be
packaged in such a way, but there’s enough diversity here to identify these as
potential scene leaders in this continued resurgence of crust-caked hardcore.